


Beauty and the Beast: But This Time, Pirates

by noblewriting



Category: Beauty and the Beast (2017)
Genre: ARRRRGH MATEYS, Amnesia, F/M, Inspired by Pirates of the Caribbean, Pirates, belle being a sassy b. as per usual, or close enough to amnesia i'm fucking counting it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-27
Updated: 2018-06-20
Packaged: 2019-03-24 22:11:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 5,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13820478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noblewriting/pseuds/noblewriting
Summary: While setting up a game for some stranded kids, a sleep-deprived Belle accidentally casts a spell—rendering the children into sharks, the library into a stormy sea, and all her friends and family into pirates who don't know her. Can Belle survive the pirates' life, and get back to her cozy home? Far more urgently, will she survive the seductions of a sea-scarred Adam? :D





	1. Chapter 1

Belle hasn’t slept. She was reading deep into the night, and had only caught an hour or two before the dawn; so it’s around noon when she descends, and dodges Lumiere and the old chest that belonged to the old prince, and Plumette and her pile of sheets, and Mrs. Potts and her tray laden down with fifty cups of tea.

 _Yum_ , thinks Belle, and stumbles over a child.

“Are you looking for someone?” she asks, smiling down at him and pretending  that she isn’t half asleep.

“Which way’s the parlor?” he asks.

“Well, there are a couple different ones, you know royalty, always getting two dozen of everything for no reason—” Belle starts apologetically, but then Cogsworth whisks the boy away, pulling one of his old bathrobes over the child’s tattered shoulders.

 _Hm_ , thinks Belle. _Bathrobe_.

She trips over several more kids before she finds her butter, and her toast, and her hot cocoa, and is curled up in slippers she stole from Adam. She tries to blink away the cobwebs in her brain: what was she reading last night?

She sees several children staring at her toast.

“Here,” she says, and hands it over, and tries to puzzle out why something is off today. _Pirates_ , she thinks. She was reading about pirates. And sharks, eating everything up. Her eyes bump over the kids, gobbling on toast.

The children want the cocoa, too, so she downs the last dregs of her cup and hands them the rest of the kettle.

 _Hm_ , thinks Belle. _I wonder if I left my book in the library._

She dawdles through the halls—Mrs. Potts is lining children up along the sides, dividing them into teams to keep things straight. In the library, children perch on chair and shelves and tables; Chapeau hands out cups of coffee, weakened with milk. Belle does what she hopes is a salute, though it may be just a slightly inebriated wave, and gently nudges a little girl off her favorite chair. The girl makes room for her and they sit together. The little girl’s feet are uncovered, and little bits of snow are stuck between her toes.

They sit together. It’s quiet, here. Belle hands the child one of Adam’s slippers.

“So,” says Belle. “What are you up to today?”

“There was an avalanche on our school trip,” says the little girl, in an accent Belle recognizes as hailing from just beyond the valley. “We’re stuck.”

“Oh,” says Belle. She watches the girl stick her two little feet into Adam’s big slipper. _Snow_ , she thinks, and something sleeping in her stretches and yawns and a thought wanders by that maybe today would be a good day to clean out the spare inventing closet. “That’s too bad. What about the rest of them?”

“They were stuck too.”

“Right.” Belle considers this info, and also where her hot cocoa went off to, and how strange it is to see two little feet stuck into Adam’s one big slipper. _Pirates_ , says another part of her, and that reminds her of the sharks. Her mind loops around back to the avalanche, and suddenly the thing that stretched and yawned falls off the bed and loses all the sheets. She yelps, “You _what?!_ ”

“Got stuck,” explains the little girl, who had heard that people in the valley were daft but didn’t see a point to holding it against them. “We’re snowed in, and staying here.”

“ _Fifty_ of you?!”

“Fifty three,” says the girl. “And that’s if you count little Dill, and no one does.”

“Fifty three, and counting little Dill,” says Belle, panic rising in her voice in a way the little girl found very interesting. “Have you seen Adam? I mean, the Beast. No, wait, I mean the Prince?”

“He was with the pretty young lady,” says the girl, and Belle’s off hopping in one slipper, thinking _We should really thank the lord Plumette’s so instantly identifiable_ and _maybe we should ask her to change her name to ‘pretty young lady’_ and _no that would be rude half the time it’s ‘beautiful woman with the smile like a sunbeam’_ and _this is what comes of reading damn pirate literature until four in the morning, I’m not nearly up to my usual standard._

She skids around a corner and finds Adam asking Plumette which she thinks is the stronger knot for tying bedsheets to curtain-rods. Seeing his beloved balanced a bit like a deranged albatross, Adam rescues her and goes back to the questions of knots.

“Never mind the knots, how are we to help fifty three children?!” demands Belle. 

“We’re to keep them warm, and dry, and have a jolly good time,” says Adam, and Belle could murder him for being so nice.

“ _Where?!_ In the library?”

“Well, mostly in the second and third parlors, but we’re expanding into the library for a little game Lumiere’s devising,” says Adam, grinning. “We’ve been given strict orders not to get them wet. And, well, the library’s very dry.”

“In its subject matter,” Plumette mutters under her breath, and yanks a knot.

“Right, that’s marvelous, it really is Adam, but I’m useless.” Belle looks up at him beseechingly. “I was up so late reading, I can’t help, I’ve barely got my words together, if I’m trusted with a child right now I’ll throw it down a well or sit on it or something by accident.”

“Belle, we’ll put you in charge of something simple, it’s all right.” Adam pats her head, and she _haaaates_ him for that, but then she’s leaning on his robe and has almost fallen asleep again and he’s too warm and wonderful to pay attention to, no matter what he’s saying, though it is probably about something she’s supposed to be doing.

The next thing Belle knows, she’s back in her chair in the library, and some primitive, small-scale ship has been built for the children to play in thanks to Lumiere’s ingenuity with Adam’s fathers old chests and trunks and glue, and several children are gathered around her, and Adam is asking her if she’ll read for the kids to keep them distracted while he and Plumette fasten the last of the rigging.

“We just need them to stay off it until it’s safe,” he’s saying. “Isn’t it clever, Belle?”

She has to admit that it is. There’s a small ship’s cabin, and pots and pans as pretend cannons, and sails made of sheets and gowns and petticoats, and a crow’s nest from a hat-box, and a name traced on the side in Lumiere’s sprawling script: _La Croyance_. Chapeau adjusts the rigging, and Mrs. Potts pulls herself up onto it for a look, and Cogsworth and Madame de Garderobe and Cadenza all paint and scrub and fix the little boat’s mast.

Somewhere, Lumiere drops a hammer.  Belle remembers she’s supposed to be useful.

“Right,” she says, and gropes for the nearest book, and opens it up and sees _pirates.  
_

_Just the thing!_ she thinks. _I read this last night, and it was a whopper. The children will love this._

The kids circle her, and stare up at her with big, wide eyes, and the snow drips off them still, and they smile at her with their small, white teeth. Everyone working on the little play boat smiles and stares out at her too. It’s warm and dry in the library, and she sits in her favorite chair, with the book propped up before her. Belle coughs and holds the book out, straight, and chants:

“Call to summon pirates; fifteen told, on the dead man’s chest. _Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum—_ _fifteen men on a dead man’s chest! Charm and chance had done for the rest—_ _Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum! Fifteen men on a dead man’s chest—belief and bad luck have done for the rest; black spot and black magic, put to the test: a bad spell to cure, have done for the rest_ , _yo ho…._ oh, bollocks, this isn’t what I’m supposed to be reading at all—” And before Belle is done apologizing, or noticing the old bent of the tattered pages, or the way the pages glow crisp and gold at her touch, or the warning _DANGEROUS_ labeled across the song, or the bit where she’d just sworn in front of children—she was very, very wet, and tossing the book away from the shock.

Another wave: crashing, high, and the ground sinking and soaking beneath her feet, and then not being here at all. Something roars in Belle’s ears, and her dress rips against her knees in the undertow, and water hits her face and she knows, for sure and certain, that she is going to drown in the library.

“—overboard!” shouts someone, somewhere, and Belle grasps toward the voice.

She puts her hands on a shark’s hide. It lashes out at her, blind teeth snapping, and she screams and tries to swim, going under as she does; and as her lungs choke and her eyes see, she sees ten—twenty—fifty sharks circling her, and when she comes up and grasps the floating chair, she sees a ship, bigger than she would have believed, cresting over the waves.

Belle has time for one strangled “what the bloody—” before she goes under again.

But suddenly there’s a rope, an actual seaman’s rope, as thick as her hand, rippled with thick strands and splintering at her touch, and she grabs it, and pulls, and is pulled back.

Strong hands lift her out and pat her head and let her swear to herself for a bit, and somebody puts a heavy wool blanket upon her, and somebody else is swearing, and out of the corner of her eye she swears she sees someone pulling up an anchor shaped exactly like a hammer.

She is allowed to sit on an apple-barrel until she recovers.

“Argh, sharks are thick here,” says someone, and the others nod, and someone else mentions that it was likely shipwreck, and they nod a bit more, and then Belle’s handed a truly repulsive tray of sea biscuits and feels she must protest.

“Look, no matter how drowned I am I don’t need a side of scurvy, too, thanks,” she says, and looks up to hand them back, and then drops the tray because Adam’s grown a _massive_ beard since she last saw him.

Ignoring the golden foliage now sprouting from his chin and reaching to his waist, Adam demands to know what she was doing floating in the middle of the sea on an armchair. Belle refuses to answer until he can explain why he is now sporting such attractive facial hair and such an incredible tan when all he’s done for the last three months is sit inside and read and shave and tell her that she’s lovely.

It’s hard to tell, but she thinks he’s frowning through the beard. The big hat with the skull on it doesn’t make him that much easier to read either.

“Get her below ships,” he orders, “and we’ll take care of her later.”

“What do you mean, take care of me? Give me more baked cockroaches for tea time? Get back here _right_ now, Adam, I swear to—”

She is shocked by how quickly he whips around. “No one knows me by _that_ name,” he says, and Belle sees a revolver cocked inside his pocket.

“Right, right, all right,” she says, soothing, “more than one of us has had a bump on the head. Quick question, hope none of you mind…did anyone see a _book_ floating near me?”

The array of beards—and, oh, Mrs. Potts, thank heaven—shake their collective heads. They also look at her with badly veiled distrust. They also all happen to be wearing the most outlandish gear.

Chapeau, with an eye-patch and a red bandana, though still all in black everywhere else. Cogsworth and a wooden leg. Lumiere and a coat clearly filched off a royal, with candles tied to his russet hair. And Plumette, too, crawling down from the crow’s nest now; no beard, but a white chemise and a belt decked out with swords. And there was Mrs. Potts—tattoos striping up her skin, and with hands callused by the sea.

“Do you know what,” says Belle, “I do believe I _will_ go below decks, and put my head between my knees.”

Adam, though still angry, helps her down the rocking wooden stairs. She can’t get her eyes off his sun-red hands. Nor the swelling muscles, showing through all the rips in his shirt; nor the scars lacing his neck, and his fingers, and creeping up to his eyes.

“This isn’t a joke, is it?” says Belle. “It’s not jolly make-believe. I’ve cursed us, haven’t I?”

“They say it’s a curse to have a woman aboard,” says Adam, “but I never held with that.”

“Oh, well, good going on that, then.”

“It’s bad luck to see a siren, though,” says Adam, “and I’ve brought one on board. God help us all.”

And he slams the door of her cell.


	2. Chapter 2

Belle squelches around in her cell for a bit, taking stock. Rats: two. Tatty blanket, more mold than wool: one. Bars keeping her from getting out: far too many. Pirates who had the faces of her friends but none of their more endearing habits, such as not wanting her dead and remembering she wouldn't kill them: about five, though that was far too few to sail a ship with.

 _Oh bloody hell, they're_ pirates _!_ thinks Belle. _It's too bloody late to be getting picky about the nautical details._

Just beyond her cell, tucked where they think she can't see them, Lumiere and Plumette stand whispering. Belle sees albatross feathers tucked in Plumette's hat, and can't help but smile at that; at least some things never change.

That didn't help the situations of _murder_ and _pirate_ and _squelch_ , though.

"If you're going to whisper about me, you might as well do it where I can hear you," Belle calls out. "I'm the one in the cell. If I don't like what you're saying, I can't really do much about it beyond trade remarks with the rat."

"It is not that we don't want you to hear us, _ma joli marinière_!" Lumiere calls back. Even with an auburn beard and fire in his hair, the man can't resist being charming. "But the captain, he gave us strict orders not to speak with you. So, you see, mademoiselle"—his hands brush up in a gesture of perfect, polite helplessness—"we must converse without you. Or your rat."

"Right, I get that, captain's orders. Don't talk to the siren. Thing is, I'm _not_ a siren. I can't sing well at all. I'm nothing compared to Madame de Garderobe. People tell me I sound auto-tuned."

Plumette's eyebrows skyrocketed up. "What did you just say?"

"Don't make me repeat my embarrassing lack of vibrato."

"Did you say Garderobe?"

"Yes. I expect she's on this ship, too, isn't she? Swanning around with 50 rapiers and—oh! Oh! Ouch! Plumette, please put that away."

The saber sticking through the bars doesn't move. Plumette, having sprung the length of the hold in under a second, quivers with suspicion and glares down at Belle.

"No one knows her by that name. And no one, mademoiselle, knows _me_ by _mine_."

"Well, I do, and until you all tell me your super-secret found-in-the-cereal-box code names, I'm afraid I'll keep putting my foot in it. Couldn't you all come out with it at once?"

"She is more than a siren," whispers Plumette to Lumiere. "She is a spy."

"A spy drowning in the ocean on a floating armchair? Really bloody brilliant plan for infiltration, then." Belle glares at them both. "Look, either take me to your 'captain' or I'll throw this rat at you. Or, better, bind you to me with my super-special-siren-spells."

Lumiere gasps. "Mademoiselle! You wouldn't! After all our kindness! After my beloved has done you the supreme honor of nearly letting you die by her sword! Beg reconsider."

"Three blind mice, three blind mice," Belle sings out. She has her eyes shut for maximum effect, but a brief peek shows the two hightailing it back up to the deck.

"So Garderobe is not to be mentioned," she murmurs. "And I'm not to say 'Adam' or 'Plumette' or any of their proper names—though that will be hard, when they look so dear and familiar it just slips out. And I'm somehow supposed to convince them I wasn't reciting a spell—though dash it all, that _is_ what I was doing, and what's more, I've succeeded, to my woe. How am I to change them back without having the spell-book? If I have to get on with pirates I shall murder them all. Why, this puts Adam's table manners right back to square one."

But before she can consider this new dire aspect of the case, or how standing around in a wet nightgown really didn't do any favors for anyone, or how she was supposed to get on when her allies thus far consisted of two rats thoroughly bored by the whole affair, or how lovely it would be if something could happen just around now to change her situation in a significant way, a cannonball shoots through the sea-facing wall and lands at her feet, smoke still clinging to its sides.

"Bollocks," whispers Belle.

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

Belle fishes her head out the cannon ball's hole, ignoring the singed edges of this new-made window into her cell. Far too close to be liked, a once-beautiful ship—now torn and lashed and ripped in piratical form—bobs and whips over the waves; she sees flashing swords, and another billow of smoke alerts her just in time that she's about to have a fully panoramic view.

When she's finished ducking, there are two cannonballs on the floor, and her window has doubled in size.

She peers up toward the deck of her own ship. She can see Adam yelling something furious, and Cogsworth readying an old gold canon, and Mrs. Potts swearing like there was no end to it (Imagine if Chip ever heard! Though come to think of it, where _was_ Chip?). And then another explosion, and the floor of Belle’s cell was smoking, and the edge of the tatty blanket was catching on fire.

 _Well I can either stay here and be smoked out by this bombast,_ thinks Belle, _or I can somehow get out. But the door's locked! And Lumiere's decided not to release me this time—oh, lord, nothing for it. Sorry to leave you like this, rats._

She hooks her hand on the edge of the hole—hoping to all heaven there's not another cannonball heading her way—and pulls herself up.

She hangs on the side of the ship, her feet barely holding on, and looks up for her next handhold. Just over her, someone on the other ship roars, and a gangplank swings over and hits the deck above. She hears stomping and yelling and Adam swearing like blue murder, and someone screams, _it’s the siren’s fault!_ over the shriek of the wind.

Belle rolls her eyes, finds herself slipping, stops rolling her eyes, and starts holding on.

She grabs a loose plank, prays, and pulls herself up to the next bit of the boat. Now there's no footholds at all, and she swings free-form, the waves crashing up beneath and soaking her feet. The other ship swings closer, and Belle realizes she will be crushed if she doesn't get up to the deck.

She prays for a moment that it's the Royal Navy, and she'll be rescued, but then she realizes the navy would kill her now-pirate husband. And if they did that, what would happen if she managed to change everybody back? Would she still be married to Adam? Or would there be a corpse on top of the toy ship in the library, for all the kiddies to enjoy?

 _Dash it all,_ she thinks, and wipes the tears from her eyes ferociously. _I won't let him be dead. Pirate or no, I've got to stand beside the bastard._

Her hands are filled with splinters and she's thoroughly soaked; bullets shoot past her ears, and another cannonball hits just where her foot just was. She breathes deep, gets a mouthful of brine, and pulls herself up to the next crack in the wood.

"Avast, ye coward!" On the gangway above Belle, Plumette lashes out with her sword, fighting an unseen opponent. Her petticoat whips around, and a trail of lace, slashed from tip to end, floats past Belle's head. Plumette screams into the wind: " _Mille sabords!_ That was genuine couture lace, _mercenaire_!"

Belle’s almost gotten there. She hooks her hand onto the porthole, and Belle sees the deck; one more pull, one more push—the sick crunch of the cannonballs hitting through the hull hammering in tempo against the ache in her head—and then she’s grabbed the railing, and pulled herself up, and can see for herself what the fuss is about.

Madame de Garderobe, face streaked with gold glitter and blood, in a coat cut from many others, has Plumette in a duel to the death. The Maestro, manning a canon on the opposite ship, is whistling out commands in a code of sea-shanties. In a moment of horror, Belle realizes who the other pirates are: her own friends, transformed into pirates’ enemies.

“What the _hell_ are you doing up here?” Adam’s appeared at her side, sword in his hand, new scars across his cheek. “Have you decided to bring us more misfortune than you already have, temptress?”

“You’re going to _kill_ them!” cries Belle.

“Not if they kill us first. God, I hate the Queen of the Seas,” and he gestures at Madame de Garderobe. Plumette’s backed up by Lumiere, now, but it doesn’t look good for either of them; Garderobe’s gaudy coat seems to contain some hidden armor in its corsetry, for no weapon seems to touch her.

“But you can’t! You like them, _love_ them—Cogsworth, for god’s sake, don’t shoot!” she yells, a moment before the major domo unleashes a harpoon in Cadenza’s direction. The maestro dodges, but the sea shanties grow louder, and the ships crash together against the waves.

“If we both must die, so be it,” growls Adam. “Two ships in the water is better than the survival of that witch.”

“Oh, this is—this is _ridiculous_ ,” says Belle. “Look, their ship’s half on fire, yours is going to sink if it gets one more hole in it—oh, for god’s sake, I don’t even know why I argue with you.” She steps over him and yanks on the ropes, sending the sails flying around the ship and nearly knocking Chapeau off. “Good _bye_ , you bunch of arses, I hope I save all your necks.”

With a horrible grinding noise, Adam’s ship tips onto its side, pulling away from Garderobe’s. That lady dashes back as the gangway crashes into the sea, still waving her sword and yelling bloody murder; Plumette is caught by Lumiere just in time, and cannons and barrels and pirates go rattling as the ship tips, and tips, and tips toward the sea.

Belle doesn’t know the faintest thing about how ships work, but the wind has caught the sails now, and they’re gaining quickly past Garderobe’s ship. Little specks on the deck, she can see Cadenza shake his fists and vow for vengeance. More disturbingly, she sees Garderobe laughing behind him, pointing toward where Belle’s headed.

But she doesn’t have time for that. She rights the boat, and ties the sails so the wind will take them far away from fighting and dying and being idiots. Content that everyone is still alive, and she may still have a chance of getting back her book, and her library, and her friends, Belle turns back to the pirates of the good ship _Croyance_.

Furious faces on every single one. Cogsworth, shaking with rage and nerves and too many cutlasses; Chapeau unable to look her in the eye, instead staring overboard with grim, tight-set lips. Plumette’s lips are twisted, and her eyes snap like firecrackers; and Lumiere is burning slowly, fury at an insult clear from his gold shoes to his smoldering hair.

“Kill her,” says Mrs. Potts, final and clear, and Belle realizes she's not safe yet by any stretch. 


	4. Chapter 4

"You're joking," says Belle, her face pale. "I just saved all your lives!"

"At the cost of our honor," hisses Adam, blood still trickling out of all his wounds. "A pirates' honor is all we have—or all we did have, before you had us turn-tail in the middle of a fight." He slams his fist against the mast. "We could have had her. We almost had her!"

"Why is this such a big thing to you?!" Belle can't help it; her voice rises, her arms flail, and she plants her feet, all preparation to argue Adam back to earth if she has to. "She's just a pirate! Another pirate! So she's competition, or whatever, aren't there seven seas for you to split? Or have you forgotten _that_ , too?"

She hadn't realized how close she'd gotten to Adam. He stares her down as she spits into his face, and she can see in his eyes that he isn't—quite—sure why the siren saves so much anger for him.

"It's more than just a pirates' feud," he hisses, quiet. "It's far, far more than that."

"So? Can't you tell me? By all the—oh, lord, I can't swear like the rest of you—by all the seaweed of the seven seas, just _explain_ to me. Tell me. Adam, come on."

"Stop using that name."

"Start treating me like a human being."

They stare each other down, and the crew is quiet against the sea. Finally, Adam flicks his hand toward the lower decks.

"Pirates' meeting," he says. "Pirates and siren. Gather round."

Muttering grimly amongst themselves, the pirates arrange apple barrels and crates of gold in a rough circle. They sit, staring at Belle as she perches on a folded-up skull and crossbones.

  
"So," says Belle. "Shoot. Not in a literal sense," she adds hastily, as Chapeau's hands go to his belt.

"The Mistress and the Maestro, together, are our deadliest enemies," says Lumiere. "Talented, ruthless, and extreme. They've had a special vendetta against us for years."

"Right, ok." This is already pressing Belle's patience—all this nonsense, talking about _years_ , when it had really only been about two hours since these bloody pirate alter egos sprang out of the library. But all right, all right.

"They've nearly sunk us, so many times. She can enchant the seas to do her will. He creates melodies that charm anyone who hears them." Plumette whispers, like she's telling a ghost story. "The creatures chase us. The monster wants to eat us."

"And they have my son," says Mrs. Potts. "They stole my son."

" _What?!_ "

"They took my boy." Mrs. Potts' face softens, just for a second, and Belle can almost see the familiar housekeeper under all the scars and sunburning. "They stole him to raise against me. And they'll never give him back, not unless we pay them off with treasure."

"Why don't you do that, then?"

"We don't have enough." Adam's face is a picture of misery. "The Maestro set a price impossible to repay. We collect jewels and gems, but....it will be years before we can get the boy back. And it'll be too late by then."

"What? They must have a reason for all this." Seeing the furious faces of her friend, Belle backtracks. "I mean....they must have a _backstory_ to all this. Since you've all been pirating for ever so many years."

"Whatever it is, we don't have time for it." Adam rubs his face in his hands. There's still blood all over his shirt he hasn't attended to, and Belle's heart falls over itself a little bit. "They catch us and they nearly kill us, and we always get out somehow not too dead, but.....ugh, I can't think."

"Come downstairs," whispers Belle, and helps him up before she knows what she's doing. "Come downstairs. Do you have a galley with warm water on this floating shipwreck? Let's...oh, heaven, look at you....let's clean off those wounds, before you do anything else."

"Get your hands off me, siren," he says, just before he faints in her arms.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is a trash fic i hope we're all enjoying ourselves


	5. Calm, Qualms, and Squall(m)s

She dunks his face in salt water until he wakes up.

"Enough, enough!—oh, it's you, lass." So she's a lass, now. At least it's an upgrade from witch. 

"Passing out in front of the crew? Not a great way to maintain your dignity, mate."

"Matey, not mate. And I swear I don't do it often— _aghh_!"

"What? I need to swab off your wounds if you don't want to get infected. Don't tell me you've forgotten about that, too, and replaced it with more cockamamie pirate nonsense."

"Like you know of a life on the sea," he says, drawing his arm away. "A landlubber of a siren you are, for all your floating about on an armchair as if you owned the whole ocean."

"I do," says Belle, "when it is what it properly is, which is the rug in the library, and not a big wet disgrace with whales in it." She yanks back his arm, staring him down until he lets her dab it with iodine. After a moment, she adds quietly, "Anyway, I feel like it's sort of my fault. You wouldn't be like... _this_ , if it weren't for me."

"Ah, this started long before you came along." _Little you know about it,_ thinks Belle. "I've been heading to the ruin of a pirate's life for many a year. Aye, I too once had a life upon the land..but I've been cursed to the seas, and their blistering waves, and all the conquest that lies between the continents to gather my gold."

He stares wistfully out the porthole, his chin in his hand, and Belle has to scrub quite hard to not melt right there on the spot.

"And we'll be here," he continues, "sailing the seven seas, until we find the map."

"The map?" 

"Aye. It's the one way to conquer the seas, and be free from the pirates' life once and for all—but only if you have the map to guide you home."

Belle has a nasty suspicion she's about to say something soft, so she quickly takes her mind off Adam's gorgeous beard and musculature and back on the bit where all of this is silly and none of it matters because they all just became pirates a couple of hours ago. "Well, all right, so there's the tragic backstory sorted, I suppose. What really matters is, what are you going to do _next?_ "

"To be honest, I'm not quite sure why it matters to you." He cocks his eye back up at her. "Weren't you off doing something quite different, before you threw your lot in with us, sea maid?"

"Yes, I was in an armchair reading sea-shanties to children," says Belle acidly. "And I'd very kindly like to be put back in that situation, if—oh, no. You're flirting, aren't you? Is this the pirates' version of flirting?"

"You'll have to stay among the pirates and find out," says Adam, a quirk of a smile playing off his cheek. "Come back above-decks—it's all right, the crew will forgive you, they're a generous lot. I once saw Plumette murder six English sailors when she could have taken the whole dozen."

"How very comforting."

 "And when there aren't any other enemy pirates about, or squalls, or mermaids, or the occasional little bit of supernatural bad weather, it's not a bad life, pirating. Even the sea biscuits aren't that bad."

"I'll hold off, thanks. Speaking of, though, has anyone ever mentioned to you the practical concerns of _scurvy_ —"

 Before Belle could continue, though, the pirates' peaceful, not-bad life immediately tipped itself sideways. There was something beneath the boat—something large, and hulking, and casting it about like a ball—and for all the comfort of Adam's sun-bronzed arms, Belle suddenly didn't feel quite right with the world.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i cannot believe we're still doing this cheers mates

**Author's Note:**

> HOPE YOU LIKED THIS PIRATE FIC PLEASE ENCOURAGE ME IF YOU WANT TO SEE MORE OF IT


End file.
